Visma Eyes London IPO

IPO Plans

As the UK market grapples with firms preferring to list on Nasdaq, or being taken private, Norwegian firm Visma, which provides accounting and payroll software to SMEs is looking to go public on the London market.  

Ownership

Visma is 70% owned by Hg and co-investors, which include GIC and TPG.

A Multi Billion EUR Company with M&A as a Core Growth Driver

Visma has grown with 350 bolt-on acquisitions with 2.8 billion EUR revenues last year. 

Example acquisition and its Merits (New regions and jurisdictions)

One of their more recent acquisitions was Evoliz in February 2025, which provides cloud based financial management for SMEs in France (alternativement PMEs - or petite et moyenne entreprises) and whose CEO is François Aupetit.  At time of acquisition, Evoliz had almost 13,000 customers. It's functionality includes invoicing, quote management and VAT, basically all the workflow that will ultimately flow into your financial accounts.  It is also NF203 certified (French standard for management software) anticipating new regulations on electronic invoicing from 2026.

ICE Brent Spikes 7% Initially in Response to Operation Rising Lion, Rallies Before Dropping 2%

ICE Brent, specifically the August 2025 future (July is no longer trading) went from just below $70 a barrel ($69.36 to be precise) to 74.23 USD per barrel from June 12th to June 13th during Operation Rising Lion. Futures continued to rally over successive days, peaking at 78.85 USD per barrel on June 19th. 

Gasoil Spikes initially 6% in response to Operation Rising Lion, Rallies Strong before Dropping 5%

Gasoil spiked on June 13th 2025, coinciding with Israel's launch of a large scale military operation against Iran called Operation Rising Lion. 

This was described by Israel as a preemptive measure in response to intelligence on Iran's closing in on capability to produce nuclear weapons. 

July25 gasoil futures (for delivery of 100 metric tonnes of low sulphur gasoil) rose 6% from 645 to 684.25 from June 12th to June 13th, rising again to 798.5 on June 19th, a 24% rise in price since the start of the operation, before coming down to 758.5 on June 20th, a 5% drop in a day.

The July gasoil futures contract has been oscillating between 650 and 700 USD per 100 metric tonnes over the past year, with a similar range applicable to the August gasoil futures contract as well.

Defense Tech Gets A Boost from Daniel Ek

Daniel Ek, who lives mainly in Stockholm, has led a 600m EUR (Series D) round of investment in defense tech firm Helsing, a four year old Munich based company, through his investment firm Prima Materia.  Other investors in this round include already-invested firms like Lightspeed Ventures, Accel, Plural, General Catalyst and SAAB.  New investors were BDT and MSD Partners.

Daniel has previously spoken on the importance of defense spending to ensure Europe's "strategic autonomy" in response to geopolitical changes.

 

Helsing is currently valued at 12 billion EUR according to a Financial Times article.  Total YTD investment in Helsing stands at 1.37 billion EUR.

In the defense technology space, this funding follows a funding of US giant Anduril which raised 2.5 billion USD led by Founders Fund whose Partners include Peter Thiel of Paypal and Palantir fame, and Trae Stephens of Anduril, an early employee of Palantir with a background in computational linguistics.

Helsing started as an AI software company taking data from military sensors and radars to build real-intelligence for the battlefield. However, it is taking its taking technology expertise to branch out into new area like unmanned mini-submarines.

Circle's Blockbuster IPO on the NYSE, Bravo Ex Macromedia CTO

Circle Internet Group, specializing in digital currencies and blockchains, went public on June 5, 2025. It debuted under ticker symbol CRCL. The IPO was priced at $31 a share, with shares surging over 100% on the first day, hitting a market cap of nearly $60bn albeit brief.  Circle was launched in 2013.

This success is significant for the crypto and fintech space.

CEO Jeremy Allaire has previously argued governments and policy makers need to "create more degrees of freedom for innovation to happen".

Allaire was co-founder of Allaire Corporation in 1995 which had an IPO in January 1999, and is hence no stranger to the public markets. 

Allaire Corporation was acquired by Macromedia in 2001 after which JA became CTO of Macromedia. He left in 2003 to join General Catalyst as a technologist and executive-in-residence.